"How Do You Do It?"
One reason I shied away from dating -- serious dating -- for so long was the simple fear of rejection. There is a difference between self-esteem and self-confidence, at least in my opinion. In my lexicon, self-confidence is what you think about your brains and abilities; self-esteem is how you view yourself compared to others, particularly in the physical sense. Being a relatively intelligent and talented woman, I have self-confidence in spades. I can carry on a conversation, whip up a fantastic meal in the kitchen, teach a room full of kids (or adults), and play the piano or sing for you at a well-above-average level.
Put me in a room of attractive women, and I become a wall flower. A fat, unattractive wall flower with floppy arms. But, fabulous shoes.
Whether or not that is actually true is subjective. What matters is how I actually view myself. My battle with my weight has been life-long and those who have known me for several years know what a huge success it has been for me to lose 85 pounds, yet I am still feeling like "the fat girl" because I have more weight to lose. I hesitate to contact gentlemen when viewing profiles that I think are interesting when I see they list their desired match's body type to be "slender" or "athletic and toned" and nothing else. My own profile vacillates between "about average" and "curvy" -- right now, it's "curvy" -- because I am so insecure. J3 and I had an interesting conversation about this, and agreed one of the worst rejections would be to go to meet someone and when they walked in, they stopped, looked at you, and gave you "that look," the one that says, "you are NOT as attractive as I was expecting," before they turned and left.
In spite of my crazy insecurity, though, I find I face rejection like a trooper. More than once I've heard the question, "How do you do it?" from girlfriends, single girlfriends considering getting into the dating scene again but, like me, fearing rejection. And it's a valid question, one that I don't have an easy or simple answer to. I suppose when you are being "rejected" by someone that you don't particularly care about, it is easy to walk away from it with little or no scarring. That's how so many of my connections on Match are -- shallow at best. An unanswered email, no response to a wink, you let it slide and the more you do it, the easier it gets.
The ones you meet get a little more complicated, but for me, so far, the decision to stop seeing each other has generally been mutual. Yes, there have been exceptions, but there will always be exceptions. One thing keeping me going is that I've yet to really have my heart broken. I haven't been in a real long term relationship, nothing truly serious. As long as my heart has remained safely ensconced within my being, I can forge ever on.
The ones for me that are so far the hardest are the ones where communication seems to be going great. The emails are zipping, the conversation interesting. It seems all the signs are pointed towards a date, and the lights are green. Then... nothing. The guy seems to stop responding, leaving me with the unanswerable questions of "what did I do wrong?" "Did I say something that offended him?" "Did I come on too strong?" "Did he meet someone else more interesting?" It is especially hard when the guy is the one who initiated the conversation, the connection. Then, poof!
That is where I fear I am right now with G, the newest bachelor. Did I move too fast in sending him my phone number? Maybe. Who knows. We're both adults and such is life. According to Match, he's been "active within 24 hours," which means he's theoretically read the email. It has been more than 24 hours since I sent it, as well as the earlier reply to his morning email, and I've received neither reply nor text message. There could be a myriad of reasons, such as busy schedule, away from his computer, etc. Or, I could have done or said something to make him not wish to communicate with me any further. I may never know. Or, I could be overreacting, not that I ever do that on this blog.
You can't force someone to respond to an email. You can't make someone like you. All you can be is you, if what you really want is a true relationship.
So I continue to plow through my daily matches, sometimes scratching my head at what I read. For example, today I was sent a match who lists his city as KCMO, but in his "about me" section says he lives in Iran and is looking for a woman in a specific city in Iran. WTH? There are other profiles and times where I wish Match, along with the "yes," "no," and "maybe" options to "are you interested?", had the "are you &%@#^! kidding me?" button.
I just need to remember:
Put me in a room of attractive women, and I become a wall flower. A fat, unattractive wall flower with floppy arms. But, fabulous shoes.
Whether or not that is actually true is subjective. What matters is how I actually view myself. My battle with my weight has been life-long and those who have known me for several years know what a huge success it has been for me to lose 85 pounds, yet I am still feeling like "the fat girl" because I have more weight to lose. I hesitate to contact gentlemen when viewing profiles that I think are interesting when I see they list their desired match's body type to be "slender" or "athletic and toned" and nothing else. My own profile vacillates between "about average" and "curvy" -- right now, it's "curvy" -- because I am so insecure. J3 and I had an interesting conversation about this, and agreed one of the worst rejections would be to go to meet someone and when they walked in, they stopped, looked at you, and gave you "that look," the one that says, "you are NOT as attractive as I was expecting," before they turned and left.
In spite of my crazy insecurity, though, I find I face rejection like a trooper. More than once I've heard the question, "How do you do it?" from girlfriends, single girlfriends considering getting into the dating scene again but, like me, fearing rejection. And it's a valid question, one that I don't have an easy or simple answer to. I suppose when you are being "rejected" by someone that you don't particularly care about, it is easy to walk away from it with little or no scarring. That's how so many of my connections on Match are -- shallow at best. An unanswered email, no response to a wink, you let it slide and the more you do it, the easier it gets.
The ones you meet get a little more complicated, but for me, so far, the decision to stop seeing each other has generally been mutual. Yes, there have been exceptions, but there will always be exceptions. One thing keeping me going is that I've yet to really have my heart broken. I haven't been in a real long term relationship, nothing truly serious. As long as my heart has remained safely ensconced within my being, I can forge ever on.
The ones for me that are so far the hardest are the ones where communication seems to be going great. The emails are zipping, the conversation interesting. It seems all the signs are pointed towards a date, and the lights are green. Then... nothing. The guy seems to stop responding, leaving me with the unanswerable questions of "what did I do wrong?" "Did I say something that offended him?" "Did I come on too strong?" "Did he meet someone else more interesting?" It is especially hard when the guy is the one who initiated the conversation, the connection. Then, poof!
That is where I fear I am right now with G, the newest bachelor. Did I move too fast in sending him my phone number? Maybe. Who knows. We're both adults and such is life. According to Match, he's been "active within 24 hours," which means he's theoretically read the email. It has been more than 24 hours since I sent it, as well as the earlier reply to his morning email, and I've received neither reply nor text message. There could be a myriad of reasons, such as busy schedule, away from his computer, etc. Or, I could have done or said something to make him not wish to communicate with me any further. I may never know. Or, I could be overreacting, not that I ever do that on this blog.
You can't force someone to respond to an email. You can't make someone like you. All you can be is you, if what you really want is a true relationship.
So I continue to plow through my daily matches, sometimes scratching my head at what I read. For example, today I was sent a match who lists his city as KCMO, but in his "about me" section says he lives in Iran and is looking for a woman in a specific city in Iran. WTH? There are other profiles and times where I wish Match, along with the "yes," "no," and "maybe" options to "are you interested?", had the "are you &%@#^! kidding me?" button.
I just need to remember:
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